This gets me thinking, has anyone done any research on whether Apple’s decision to completely replace devices rather than fixing and returning them and to solder RAM and storage increases e-waste production (regardless of whether the waste is recycled) to the point where any increased reliability can’t justify the increase in waste?

There should also be a rule that a device weighing more than 1kg (2.2lb) and having MSRP above $999 USD must have a user replaceable storage.

I’m not aware of any other devices beyond MacBook Air and Pro being affected by such a rule.

ThinkPad Nano and ThinkPad Snapdragon X13s each weigh just slightly above 1kg and have MSRP above 1k, so they’d also be required to comply, but they already do have removable 2242 NVME storage! Same for LG gram that weighs just 1kg, and many other products.

The weight of user-replaceable 2280 2TB modules? About 7g, that’s 0.007kg, so you won’t be notice on an MBP that weighs 2.1kg.

Apple seems to be the only manufacturer that solders SSD, and sells $100 2TB upgrades at $800, for a clear 8x markup. This also means that people will have to throw the entire machine away once they need more storage than 256GB, instead of simply proceeding with a simple 4TB@$100 upgrade in 2025.